My father was a lawyer and to my best knowledge nobody in my family before had interest in science.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I can't think of any relatives that ever went into science.
I was the only child, and I know my father had certain thoughts about me. He was a lawyer and extremely literary, but he would have been much happier if I had wanted to be a lawyer, a scientist, an engineer. But what I wanted to do was read.
My parents, once I made it clear to them that I wanted to do science, they were totally sympathetic.
I don't recall any interest in science in particular. It came later in college.
From an early age, I knew I would become a scientist. It may have been my brother Sam's doing. He interested me in the laws of falling bodies when I was ten and helped my father equip a basement chemistry lab for me when I was fifteen. I became skilled in the synthesis of selenium halides.
My father was a chemist on the Yale faculty, my mother a housewife.
My father was a doctor.
My father was on the faculty in the Chemistry Department of Harvard University; my mother had one year of graduate work in physics before her marriage.
My father happened to be a doctor, and though I loved and idealized him privately, professionally I never had any use for him or anyone connected with that science.
My interest in science had many roots. Some came from my mother as she finished her B.A. degree studies in college while I was in my early teens.